


Out of the Box

by snekwami



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Gen, Nonbinary Character, bunnix says TRANS RIGHTS, pride month, spoilers for the timetagger episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 11:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19317142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snekwami/pseuds/snekwami
Summary: When the girl squad want to hang out again, it's hard to find an excuse to say "no" when the truth is, you don't fully fit in.





	Out of the Box

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!!!!!!! I feel like trans content always gets overlooked and anyway, nonbinary Alix is one of my favourite headcanons so here you go, here's a quick thing! (I had a dream that I wrote it and when I woke up it was still vividly in my head so I churned it out as quick as I could)
> 
> Also on my tumblr @bunnykwami

Having a kwami now was different from what Alix had expected. No matter what was going on, where she was, Fluff was always just sort of… _there_. Watching, hidden, aware of everything and yet so silent. For someone who was used to being a lot more solitary, it did almost seem like some kind of constant surveillance.

She knew, of course, that over time she would come to trust the little kwami – she had seen how her older self had acted during the Timetagger attack. But that was years in the future! Until then, being able to open up to what was essentially a tiny magic stranger was going to be a slow task. She didn’t even have the fun of transforming very often, not when Bunnix’s powers were too strong to be used on the ordinary, day-to-day akuma attacks that didn’t even faze anyone anymore. No, she simply had to go about her life as normal, with the added caveat that an immortal god with unfathomable superpowers was watching her every move.

-

It was after a long, unsatisfying day that she got back to her room that evening, tearing her skates off and flopping down onto her bed with no mind to do anything at all.

Fluff popped out of her pocket, a worried look on that adorable little face of hers. “Is everything okay? You seem to be in a bad mood! Are you alright?”

Oh, where to even _start_. It was hard to explain all the little things piling up – losing that skate race today, her knee stinging from where she landed on it after a particularly nasty trip, knowing that she had too much homework to be getting on with and no desire to even start.

But to tell the truth, those were all normal constants in her life, and nothing to be too upset about. What was really getting her down, it was… hard to put into words.

Fluff flew over and gave her cheek a little prod. “Don’t tell me you’re ill! Do you need me to do anything? I could make some soup! I’ll get the thermometer! I could–”

“I’m not ill, don’t worry!” Alix said. As discontent as she was, she couldn’t help but smile – usually Fluff was the anxious, neurotic one, the one who needed cheering up and taking care of. It was sweet to know that the little kwami would happily do the same for Alix in return when she needed it.

“Well whatever you need, just let me know and I’ll happily do it!”

“Thanks. But there’s not really anything that can be done.”

“Why not? What’s wrong?”

Alix sighed. “It’s… nothing much. Just, um, a bunch of little things.”

“Like what?”

Like things that Alix didn’t say out loud to people, not knowing how, and being sure that no one could really understand! But Fluff looked so concerned, and if Alix was going to have a magic sidekick living in her pocket for the next several years at least, there were some things that wouldn’t be able to stay hidden forever. Not without a lot of stress involved, anyway.

“For starters,” Alix said, deciding to begin with something that was perfectly acceptable to complain about, “it’s _that_ time of month.”

“Oh…” Fluff nodded, her twitchy eyes widening. “I remember my last holder complaining about that too…”

“It sucks and it hurts and there’s no point! And I’d go to the doctor and get that pill thing to stop it, but my dad won’t let me, and… and speaking of my dad, you heard what he was saying earlier…”

Fluff nodded again. Sitting in Alix’s pocket all day, there was no way she couldn’t have heard it – the usual _Why can’t you be more ladylike? You’re not a little child anymore, you need to stop being so immature! Can’t you be more like your friends?_

“I’m sorry,” Fluff said, giving her a gentle pat. “There is nothing wrong with being a tomboy, even into adulthood.”

Alix winced. “Yeah, but… I’m… it’s not exactly… _that_ …”

It had been nice when she was a kid, knowing she could just act however she wanted, be whoever she wanted, and it would all get thrown under the word “tomboy” and she never needed to worry. But growing older, even that open word had started to feel too suffocating, like she was supposed to fit some mould of “tomboy”, and at this point just hearing the word itself was like a sharp knife stabbing into her.

We want you to be _ladylike_. And if you’re not, you have to be a _tomboy_. It’s not _ideal_ , but it’s _obligatory_.

What happened when even the word “tomboy” just didn’t feel right?

Fluff was watching her, more solemn than usual. “Alix? Is there something you need to talk about?”

Yes, oh dear god _yes_ , but she wasn’t used to saying these things out loud. Not even Nathaniel knew everything about how she truly felt – heck, not even Jalil knew, and he’d been there from the start. Why should she tell some kwami who she’d only known for a month or so at most?

At that moment there was a message on her phone. She had a quick look, only to roll her eyes and toss it off the edge of the bed and out of her line of sight. Fluff jumped in surprise.

“What happened? What did the message say? Was it something bad?”

Alix shook her head at first, planning to play it off as something unimportant. But this day had just been too much – she noticed with alarm that the beginnings of tears were stinging her eyes. Oh boy. She was _not_ going to cry in front of this kwami, thanks.

“It was Marinette,” she said, blinking the tears away and trying to sound as nonchalant as she could. “She wanted to know if I wanted to join the girl squad to go watch a movie today.”

“You don’t want to go?”

“Nah. Too tired.”

Fluff was frowning, watching her, seemingly able to see right through that flimsy excuse. Did this kwami really know her so well already? Or was it a side-effect of being an ancient god? In any case, a pang of guilt hit Alix. Fluff was trying so hard to help, to be there for her and make her feel better, and she wasn’t exactly making it easy when she couldn’t even directly say what the problem was.

But it was just so hard…

She took a deep breath, reminding herself how the future-Alix had been so close with Fluff, so at ease, and that must mean that everything would turn out okay in the end. Her kwami would not abandon her for anything.

“Some days I just… _don’t_ feel like hanging out with them,” she started, trying to find the right words. “They’re wonderful and I’m so glad they’re my friends. But… I can’t… I just don’t fit in sometimes. Because…”

Fluff’s expression hadn’t changed. For the first time it really, truly hit Alix – this wasn’t a tiny human she was talking to. This was some complete unknown creature that couldn’t be compared to any other on earth.

Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe Fluff would be able to understand better, in fact, why some things about humanity seemed so very arbitrary, so weirdly stifling and alien and no other humans she knew could figure out why it felt so wrong.

She watched Fluff very carefully as she asked, “Fluff, are you a girl?”

Fluff stayed in silent thought for a few seconds before answering.

“Kwamis do not have a gender or a physical sex. We are simply beings of pure energy that cannot be defined by human forms. However, throughout much of history, many of our human holders have given us categories that they feel best suit us, as their way of fitting creatures like us into their understanding of the world. We accept these gender labels as a way to participate in human culture. I have most often been given the “female” category, as per human customs, but it doesn’t have any bearing on me, personally.”

Just hearing those words, it was enough to set Alix’s mind slightly at ease. Kwamis didn’t necessarily fit into the rigid human _gender_ concept.

And… and maybe some humans didn’t quite fit it either.

“The truth is,” Alix said, “I asked because… um… can I tell you something? Something I don’t really talk to anyone about?”

“Of course, of course! Anything at all!”

“Well you see, I know people call me a tomboy, and I know the girl squad invite me out with them a lot because they consider me a part of the squad too, and I do sometimes feel like it, but…”

The tears were coming back, and she hastily wiped them away.

“…I just feel sometimes like I’m not really… _meant_ to be a girl. Like I just look like this and something went kinda wrong along the way and I’m meant to be… I don’t even know, just something else! And some days I don’t mind it so much but other days I just _can’t_ , and I feel like such an imposter! I can’t even hang out with my friends those days because they think I’m one of them and I’m just – I’m just _not!”_

She knew she was usually a confident sort of person, but this was so nerve-wracking she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. And yet in a way she needed to get this all out – now that she’d started, she had to take this opportunity to say everything on her mind before she clammed up again forever.

“I don’t really know how to explain it to people, I guess, because they’d think if I’m not a girl then I have to be a boy and I don’t want that either! Nothing feels _right_ , and I just cope with it most of the time but I wish I didn’t have to, some days it just all gets too much, like today… I mean, some days it’s not that bad, but I still don’t think I ever really truly fit in as a girl, because…”

_Because I’m not a girl._

The thought was so comforting, yet at the same time so terrifying. Impossible to say aloud.

She wasn’t a girl. Even from a young age she’d picked up that something was wrong, something didn’t quite click in the way it was supposed to. But she just dealt with it and went about her life because that was what she was supposed to do.

And yet as she got older, as the boxes of acceptability got narrower and narrower, she found herself further and further outside them. She couldn’t just go on being forced into a space where she simply wouldn’t fit.

Having seen Bunnix, her own future self, she had very quickly noticed that haircut. Evillustrator-style, right? Just how she would want it, and simply didn’t have the means to get now. The perfect kind of hairstyle where no matter how she was feeling that day, it would fit whatever label she wanted the world to see her as.

If she wanted to hang out with the girl squad that day? It could be a bob. If she wanted to simply chill out with Nath at the museum? She could ruffle it up and look exactly as androgynous, masculine, feminine, _whatever_ as she wanted to be.

It had given her hope. So much hope. That in the future, she could simply _be_ , and not need to feel like an imposter, wearing a costume and pretending to be a girl, or a tomboy, or anything else people expected of her.

“I find it hard to know what exactly I am,” she admitted, rubbing her eyes again and hoping the waterworks wouldn’t start. “It fluctuates sometimes. But I never truly feel like I make sense as a girl or a boy. And uh… while I’m confessing things, I may as well mention…”

She fiddled with the newly bought rings on her fingers – a white one on the middle left, and a black one on the middle right.

“I’m not really like… _into_ boys either, or girls, and it makes it hard to like… anchor myself to a gender or whatever, because everyone else seems to at least be able to figure it out by knowing how they’d see themselves in a relationship, like how Marc did. But I just find all that stuff kind of a bit gross, so like… that doesn’t help me, and no one seems to understand that either…”

Fluff had been very quiet up until this point, paying close attention without interruption. But Alix had run out of things to say, and in any case her voice was beginning to tremble and she couldn’t have _that_ , so she gave the little bunny a shaky smile.

“So yeah… I’m n-not a girl or a boy really. I’m… uh, I’ve seen the word ‘nonbinary’ around, and I kinda l-like it, so…”

A tear ran down her cheek – yep, time to shut up for real now. She sniffed and wiped it away. Who knew coming out could take such a toll? An overwhelming mix of terror and relief, she was glad she’d done it but wow, this was all a bit much.

For a few seconds Fluff waited. But once it was clear Alix was not going to say anything else, she hopped up into the air, whizzed over at top speed and launched herself at Alix in what was apparently the kwami equivalent of a hug.

“Oh Alix, that all makes perfect sense!” she gushed. “I understand completely – there’s so much ambiguity and nuance in the universe, of _course_ there are always going to be people like you! I never knew the word ‘nonbinary’ until today; I learned something new. Thank you for confiding in me!”

Alix gave Fluff’s head a pat. “Thank you for l-listening…”

“It’s okay to cry, I know you have strong emotions, and from what I’ve seen humans tend to take gender too seriously, so no wonder it’s hurting you and you didn’t tell anyone, but you deserve to be happy being who you are and I’ll always be there for you and… and I’m rambling again now I’m sorry! I’m just very proud of you!”

Oh, thank goodness. Bless this kwami. She understood, and she knew now, so there was nothing to keep hidden. For the first time, Alix truly did feel like she could be herself – her _complete_ self, with not a single thing hidden whatsoever. She could see now, how in the future, her older self and Fluff had such a strong bond. It was the trust and support that this little kwami gave her.

Nonbinary… yeah. A word that finally did fit.

For a while Alix didn’t say anything more, just listening to Fluff continuing to gush and letting the tears subside somewhat. She vaguely remembered Bunnix’s outfit: the blue, the white, her own pink hair. She had always wondered if she counted as “trans enough” to even call herself such, or to ever dress in the colours of such a pretty flag, but finally she was beginning not to doubt it. Perhaps Bunnix was out in the future, already having told everyone that she was nonbinary, or perhaps she didn’t say anything, but every closet trans kid in Paris would look at her suit and wonder: _Is she dressed in those colours for a reason?_

One thing was for sure, though. It was getting far too stifling to keep this under wraps for much longer.

Having stopped crying by now, she put a determined smile back on her face. “Hey Fluff?”

“Yes?”

“Tomorrow I’m gonna tell Nath.”

Fluff’s face lit up. “Ooh, that’s wonderful! I’m sure he’ll be fully supportive!”

Well of course he would be, he was dating a genderfluid demiboy, wasn’t he? But that wasn’t all. Alix clenched a fist. “And then I’m gonna tell the girl squad.”

“Yes, yes, go for it! If they know, then you won’t feel so out of place when spending time with them, right?”

“Right! And I bet they won’t mind, they were all fine with Marc…”

Plenty of kids at their school weren’t straight, it was common knowledge. Ladybug and Chat Noir had done so much supportive work during pride month that luckily these kids all felt safe coming out to their friends. But usually it was gay, bi, ace… As far as she knew, Marc was the first person anyone knew who wasn’t cis.

In that case, Alix could be the second.

She pulled a little carrot out of the bag in her pocket and held it up at Fluff. “Hey, I really can’t thank you enough for being so nice about everything, so uh, have a carrot I guess.”

Fluff gladly took the carrot and began munching away, speaking with a mouth full. “Anytime! You truly are one of the most unique miraculous holders I’ve ever had! I hope you’re feeling better now?”

Alix nodded. “Much better.”

“Good! I’m so glad!”

“In fact…”

She recollected how her father was getting stricter as she got older, and how every time she needed to vent about anything, she’d go barge into Jalil’s room and tell him, and he never minded one bit.

“…first things first, I’m gonna go see Jalil. He gets to know first. That way I can complain to him whenever dad’s being annoying about the tomboy thing again.”

“Sibling solidarity – wonderful idea!”

“Cool. Wish me luck.”

She held her fist out for a fist bump, and misunderstanding it as always, Fluff gently bopped her head against it. Bless her, honestly, she was the sweetest, and the absolute best. With her support, nothing seemed so bad anymore. If Alix had managed to come out once, she could do it again, right?

She cracked her knuckles and headed for the door. Time to go tell Jalil that his little sister was more of a general little _sibling_ , and that she definitely needed help with her homework from him, and that afterwards she could go watch that movie with the girl squad after all.

Huh… maybe _flower_ squad was a better name for it, remembering how Marinette and Alya had nicknamed them all during that stupid plan with the flower petals. Or perhaps a “no boys allowed” squad.

Because she wasn’t quite a girl, and wasn’t quite a boy. Nah – the most powerful superhero in Paris, the last resort when everyone else had failed, was _nonbinary_. If neither time nor space were obstacles to her, then neither was gender. And that was exactly how she liked it.


End file.
